A report from the Austrian region of Tyrol has shown that 47 per cent of all criminal suspects in the first half of the year have been from foreign backgrounds.

Police say that out of the total of 13,360 suspects involved in crimes in the first half of the year, 6,288 came from foreign backgrounds. While overall criminality has gone down by just over 5 per cent, the number of foreign suspects has gone up dramatically since 2009 when foreigners made up 32 per cent of all suspects, Kronen Zeitungreports.

The largest group of offenders were tourists, followed by guest workers, and then asylum seekers with 883 suspects having an asylum seeker background.

In some of the districts of the region, the numbers are even greater. The Landeck district saw 66.9 per cent of criminal suspects coming from foreign backgrounds, largely blamed on the number of winter tourists in the area. The district of Reutte also had a particularly high rate of foreign suspects at 54.4 per cent.